Commenting on my blog “Much More and Much Less than a Boss” on Daily KOS, Alpha99 put up a link to a video on YouTube that they thought I would appreciate called “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”, done by Daniel Pink, who writes about business and human motivation, based on his book by the same name. I played it and was practically mesmerized by this visually captivating and provocative piece, done on a white board with markers and a rapid-fire voiceover by Pink. The issues it calls out are a perfect illustration of what I see as the transformative shift going on in our culture from the hierarchical control model to more of an egalitarian circle of equals.

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I recently read a May 7 article in Education Week, “Embracing Wikipedia”, where author and science teacher Matthew Shapiro makes the case for Wikipedia as a research tool, particularly for students (and therefore I guess for any casual life-long learner), competing favorably (at least in Shapiro’s opinion) with the “Gold Standard” Encyclopedia Britannica.

Heads up folks… you might even want to sit down! Wikipedia uses an anarchic form of governance. In fact, though it may be a long time until “brick and mortar” institutions adopt it, this portable, adaptable and minimalist governance model, may well be one of the biggest trends of the 21st Century, particularly in cyberspace.

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I believe we are approaching a developmental crossroads in the evolution of our human species, though we might be a little bit stuck and in need of some sort of inspirational push. With all the violent religious (and secular) fundamentalism in the past century, we need to come to a new covenant among more tolerant belief systems and traditions to accept “many paths”, acknowledging that your path through the transcending mysteries is just as appropriate for you as mine is for me. That is, as long as both of those paths follow a few basic principles, like the Golden Rule. (more…)

n 1971, when I was sixteen years old and still living with my mom and younger brother Peter in Ann Arbor, our old washing machine in the basement broke down and my mom (who could barely pay the regular bills) decided she could not afford to fix or replace it, at least not right away. Who would think this would be the catalyst for me to have a transforming experience.

Tears in her eyes, she pulled the wet clothes out of the broken-down and leaking washer and threw them in a plastic laundry basket. Her life was already heavy on her shoulders, a divorced single parent with two teenage kids, suffering from depression, and just barely paying bills on the child-support payment from my dad. Having to take laundry to the Laundromat (until she could somehow magically move the money pots around in her budget to get a new washer) felt like the last straw. (more…)

Nearly two months into my European odyssey, on a train from northern Italy to Switzerland, a weary traveler and somewhat of a lost soul, I entered what I recall as the Saint Gotthard Tunnel, under the Alps, and emerged into a completely transformed world and a new chapter in my existential journey with fresh insight into the human condition. (Note that I may have actually gone through a different tunnel of comparable length, as noted by someone who read this piece with a good knowledge of Western European railway geography, though at the time that was my recollection.) (more…)

In the late 1970s during my last couple years in my hometown of Ann Arbor, inspired by that song from the Who’s rock opera “Tommy”, I became a pinball wannabe wizard, making time each day I was on campus for my college classes to drop a few dollars worth of quarters in the slot and transcend my muggle life into the world of metal spheres, plastic flippers, bumpers, targets, spinners and those accursed ball-eating gutters. Inspired by reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine some years earlier, it was a time in my life where I was experimenting with living in the moment, at times aided by smoking marijuana, and beginning to wrestle with life at a more metaphysical level.

It was a profoundly simple and dazzling universe of exotic noises and lights highlighting the spectacular laws of kinetic physics guiding that iconic silver ball on its course (whoa… way too many adjectives!), a compelling game of skill that required a calm mind, hyper focus, extreme sensitivity and the ability to meld with the machine and bring it alive. (more…)

In 1977 and 1978, as a young adult now living on my own in my hometown of Ann Arbor (my mom and dad had remarried each other and she had moved down to Ohio to live with him), I was somehow able to live almost completely in the moment, aided by the transcending joy I found walking from place to place in town. After twenty plus years of navigating these streets on foot, by bicycle or by car, I knew them so well I could head out towards my destination of the moment, let my mind totally drift with any thought so at times I barely knew exactly where I was but still managed to get where I was going, experiencing the joys of all four full seasons and continuing my exploration of the magical side to life. (more…)

Reading Ray Bradbury’s book paved the way for my own encounter with, and embrace of, the magical side of life, while still not believing in god. I think I read the book over forty years ago in junior high English class, and I can hardly recall any of the details of the story, but no book I’ve read has had more impact on my life. It’s one of those cases where you encounter an idea that does not seem to impact you immediately, but seeds a thought in your mind that maybe comes to fruition at some later time, when that idea addresses a new need.

I think as a child I lived in a world of constant magic, creativity and imagination, so acknowledging a magical side of life was not an issue… there was just life and it was what it was… and for me that included being magical. Now looking back, I acknowledge the context of circumstances, the privilege of being a white male growing up in a progressive, middle-class community in America. I also acknowledge the proactive effort of my parents to raise me “outside the box” and dedicate time and money (given their modest means) to create an enriched environment for me to bloom within and explore life’s enchantment. (more…)

I got my ethical foundations from my family but also from the secular humanist university milieu I grew up in without a hint of religion or god in that context. During the Cuban Missile Crisis I wrestled with the possibility of nuclear war, my own mortality, and was I destined to go to hell if there was a god which I was not believing in. For me, that concern did not change the “facts on the ground”, in the sky, in the heart, or in the laughs of children, where other people might feel the presence of a deity. (more…)

I was in fourth grade in 1963 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when there was apparently a real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Somewhere in that timeframe I became aware of this possibility, probably as a result of TV news coverage and a couple “Duck & Cover” exercises led by my teacher in my elementary school classroom. For those of you too young to remember these exercises, you were spared a fearful experience of powerlessness and contemplation of the abyss. For me, it was my first confrontation with my own mortality, possibilities for an afterlife and the existence of god. (more…)